The Truth About the Ring Pop

I met my fiance through online dating, which some people may call cringy but I like to think of it as a modern take on the Victorian era. You get set up by a mutual friend or a relative (or the dating website), send letters (or texts) back and forth before you meet in person, and then agree on a time and place to meet in a well-chaperoned (or openly public) place. And after that first meeting, you either continue to correspond and subsequently see each other again, or you shun them for all eternity and become the subject of gossip in high society. Or something along those lines.

My now fiance and I talked every single day before we met up in person (in fact we’ve talked to each other in some form every single day since that very first “hello”) and after a couple dates, we decided to officially be a couple, which then lead to being engaged…which is why you’re probably reading this right now. You want to know how it all happened, because who doesn’t love a good proposal story? Well, here’s ours:

We had talked a lot about getting engaged and getting married, so I was prepared for him to pop the question at some point this spring, but not in the way that he did. Especially since the day before he had told me that ring hadn’t arrived yet so he wouldn’t be able to propose until after Easter. Our proposal story is defiantly more of a scene out of a rom-com than a grand gesture, but I love it…

He was coming over to my house, but he was running late and I had had a rough night so I decided to take a nap while I waited for him. When he got to my house I was fast asleep on the couch so he woke me up and told me that he had a surprise gift for me (remember, he told me he didn’t have the ring yet). So when I opened a bag to see some gifts and a green ring pop I thought nothing of it. I even jokingly said, “I accept your proposal” but upon seeing that it was a green not an orange ring pop I promptly took that statement back (orange ring pops are my favourite and clearly the best).

He then showed me a scrapbook that he had put together of the dates we’d been on, notes that we sent each other, and spaces for me to write in my favourite memories of us. Now I strongly dislike reading things while people are watching me read them, so I was just flipping through the pages fully intending to read them later.

At this point, I was still totally clueless and thought that he had just made this cute book for me because he knew that I’d been having a tough week. And then I turned the last page and on it, he had written Will You Marry Me? I then proceeded to cover my mouth in shock and awe as he got down on one knee with an orange ring pop (!) and proposed! And obviously, I said yes!

It was then that he told me why he had been so late. It was because he had lost the ring he was going to propose with (it was a silicone one, not a diamond ring so it wasn’t super expensive) somewhere on the drive from his house to mine. So he had parked at the top of the road to tear his car apart to see if it was hiding somewhere. Unfortunately, it wasn’t. The fact that he still continued on with the proposal even though he now only had a ring pop is such a testament to who he is as a man. That he was so excited about our life together that he didn’t need the “perfect moment” to propose, but instead made the moment that we had perfect.

Honestly, I love that this is the story that I get to tell people because it’s so us. We’ve always focused more on the memories instead of the fancy things. We’ve built intentionality into our relationship and that comes through in how we show our love for each other. The fact that he went out of his way to make a scrapbook for me, even though he’s not a crafty person but he knows that I love them, makes me feel seen and loved.

Ours isn’t a proposal that you’d see in a movie or watch on a reality tv show, but it speaks to our relationship and the kind of life that we want to build together. One that has the Lord as our foundation. That is based on making the other person feel fully known and fully loved. And one that focuses on making memories instead of getting everything perfect. So that’s our story, I hope that you enjoyed it as much as I do!